Mac OS X Tips & Tricks

Some things I learnt today:

Proxy icons: in a document-based application (like Finder, TextEdit, Preview, Pages…), after a document has been saved, a proxy icon for the document appears in the title bar. It represent the file itself, and can be likewise manipulated:

click it for a few seconds and drag to another application to open it, or to the desktop/Finder if you want to copy/move it, etc…

⌘-click (or control-click, or right-click) it to view the path menu, useful to open the folder or any subfolders of the file in the Finder.

and

In any Finder window or Open/Save dialog, you can hit Command+Shift+G to get a location bar from which you can directly type in the directory to go to. It even supports ~ for home and tab completion.

and

You can increase or decrease your volume by quarter increments by Pressing:

Option + Shift + Volume Up/Down

and

While Cmd tabbing between applications, without releasing CMD, you can hit ‘Q’ to quit or ‘H’ to hide the selected application. Works great with the mouse to get rid of a whole bunch of applications quickly.

The bevel won’t go away and you can repeat this for as many applications as you like as long as you’re holding CMD.